BioMart 0.4 Released

BioMart 0.4, a new version of the query-oriented data management system
has been released. This release includes the following new features:

It is now possible to federate BioMart databases over port 80 which
overcomes any issues with direct RDBMS access and permits the use of
BioMart remotely without the need to either expose database servers to
the outside world or open outgoing connections through a firewall.
This new feature takes advantage of the web service layer which has now
been exposed to third party programmers.

BioMart now supports restricted data access where different users can
see different
parts of the data according to their privileges. This can be set on
the dataset, table
or even individual column and/ or row level. It is an important feature
in scenarios
where different groups collaborate on the same project but have
different
level of access to a sensitive (e. g. clinical) data

Please note that the new features in version 0.4 required restructuring
of the client-side (registry) and the server-side (dataset)
configuration and
therefore an upgrade procedure is necessary for existing BioMart
implementations.
Our central registry will continue to operate using both the old and
new style registry
for approximately one month to give people time to upgrade the code
accessing
public BioMart databases. However the old style part of the registry
will not be
updated until it is phased out.